Dr. Sundar Sarukkai is the founder of the Barefoot Philosophers initiative. His work is primarily in the philosophy of natural and social sciences. He is the author of Translating the World: Science and Language (2002), Philosophy of Symmetry (2004) , Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of Science (2005), What is Science? (2012), two books co-authored with Gopal Guru – The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory (2012) and most recently Experience, Caste and the Everyday Social (2019). His book titled JRD Tata and the Ethics of Philanthropy was published in July 2020. He is the Co-Chief Editor of the Springer Handbook of Logical Thought in India, the Series Editor for the Science and Technology Studies Series, Routledge and editorial advisory member of Leonardo as well as Marg. Sarukkai was a professor of philosophy at the National Institute of Advanced Studies till 2019 and was the Founder-Director of the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities where he set up an innovative interdisciplinary postgraduate program. He has been actively taking philosophy to different communities and places, conducting philosophy workshops for children and bringing philosophy to the public through his writing in the media through Barefoot Philosophers. His forthcoming book is on philosophy for children which will be published in English and other languages.
Dr. Meera Baindur is an educator, researcher, and writer in philosophy and environmental humanities. She was formerly an associate professor at Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. She is currently working as a ethics expert and online course designer for a Geneva based organization called Globalethics.net. Her book Nature in Indian Philosophy and Cultural Traditions was published by Springer (2015). She has a doctoral degree in the interdisciplinary area of environmental philosophy from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. Earlier, she stayed with village communities in the Himalayas for a few years, working at a grassroots level on environment and sustainability issues. During this time, she also pursued traditional studies in Indian philosophy and yoga. Her research interests include Indian Philosophy, environmental philosophy and environmental humanities, conceptualisation of nature in Indian thought, gender and religions as well as landscape deities and ecological practice in the Himalayas, rituals, and cultural geography. Her recent work focuses on Indian philosophical concepts related to body through the framework of gender, place, ritual and aesthetic traditions. She is currently working on two projects, one on the emerging field of cyber ethics or internet ethics and the other on a phenomenon called “ecofear” in Environmental humanities. She also runs a vlog on youtube on Indian philosophy called Mistress of Philosophy.
Varun S Bhatta is an assistant professor of philosophy at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Bhopal (IISER Bhopal). Previously he was an assistant professor at FLAME University. He finished his doctoral studies at National Institute of Advanced Studies (Bengaluru). Prior to his Master’s in Humanities, he worked as a developer in the IT sector for five years. Metaphysics and philosophy of science are some of the areas he has worked on. His recent research was on the nature of scientific objects. Specifically, he focused on wave-particle duality phenomenon in the context of physical objects. Some of the published works on this topic are: Duality in Science (2020) (co-authored with Sundar Sarukkai), Plurality of Wave-Particle Duality (2020) and Critique of Wave-Particle Duality of Single-Photons [Forthcoming].
Vijay Govind Nath is a student of philosophy from Kerala. He was a research associate at the Philosophy in Action project and has been a part of barefoot philosophers since 2018. He is currently working at his family’s restaurant in Kerala while pursuing research on the notions of ‘merit’ and how they inform hierarchies. He has a Masters in philosophy from the University of Hyderabad.
Mansi is currently an assistant Lecturer at the Jindal Global Law University, Sonepat. She has a Masters from the University of Leiden, the Netherlands in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. She is exploring Philosophy of Technology, philosophical approaches to pedagogy and instruction having been a fellow with Teach For India. She has been consistently involved with the vision and activities of Barefoot Philosophers towards making Philosophy a more social and easily accessible public discourse.
Dr. Srajana Kaikini is an assistant professor of philosophy at Krea University. Her doctoral degree is from Manipal Academy of Higher Education. She trained as an architect and has done her Masters in Arts and Aesthetics from JNU with a diploma in curatorial studies from de Appel, Amsterdam.She was the collections curator at the K K Hebbar Gallery and Arts Centre (2016-2019). Latest independent curatorial works include Backstage of Biology at Archives at National Centre for Biological Sciences (2019) and Vectors of Kinship (2016) at 11th Shanghai Biennale. Her rpublications include The Aesthetics of Risk in Artistic Practice: What is at Stake? (2020-21), The Necessity of Understanding Disasters in the Language of Suffering (2020), Curating Interdisciplinarity in Literature-Art (2018), Resonance in Dhvani Aesthetics and the Deleuzian Logic of Sensation (2018), The Return of the Translator (2017) and many others. She dances, sings, creates, designs, curates, writes and teaches by way of doing philosophy. She loves the sea.
Shivprajval Divakar has an MSc. in Biology from IISER Mohali and is a philosophy enthusiast.
In Barefoot Philosophers, he found a community engaging with questions which he sees as important but is not addressed at most places.
Currently, he is exploring different aspects of the philosophy of science by reading, reflecting, conducting physical experiments and thought experiments, and playing with concepts and activities in science.
